It was Bill Geer who launched me on my “life of unlearning.” In fact, Professor Geer (as we insisted upon calling him no matter how often he said ‘call me Bill’), challenged us to live just such a life, taking the term from Lincoln Steffens’ essay. It was, he would bellow from the front of the class room, “a damn shame that so many smart young people come to this great University just to convince themselves that what they already know is all they need to know.” Disabusing us of such nonsense and getting us to think for ourselves was a mission he set himself to with great relish, and I was lucky to have stumbled upon him as a professor. I met Bill Geer at a pre-college camp sponsored by the campus YW/MCA. He was one of a number of lecturers and speakers that came that long weekend to try to get us to think about what college held in store; we were more interested in finding our first dates for the football home opener. To this day he is the only thing I really remember about the camp. On a clear evening he held forth about the so-called